After the debacle against Duke, there are still some people trying to figure out Clemson’s path to the playoffs.
There still is one.
Clemson’s schedule features ranked teams Florida State, Notre Dame, and UNC. Road games against Miami, NC State, and South Carolina would be quality wins too. Then there is the ACC Championship game. Yes, Clemson can very well reach the playoffs.
That’s where that story ends. The real question is not if Clemson can reach the playoffs. The real question is it time to panic at Clemson? Is it time to panic about the season? The future? Yes and yes.
Will Dabo Swinney ever embrace the transfer to fill areas of need?
What should scare Clemson is that Duke beat them by 3 Touchdowns, and didn’t even play that well. Clemson led in nearly every major statistical category, and you never got the feeling that the Tigers were going to win the game in the 2nd half.
Duke played, smarter and harder. They were better at the QB position, better at most of the skill positions on offense, and had better special teams. If they played 10 times, I honestly feel like Duke wins 7 of the games. The talent gap was negligible.
Going back to last year Clemson is 3-4 in its last 7 games. Three of the four losses have been by blowout. That’s not a hiccup, that is a trend. The trend is the Tigers one of the elite programs in college football are closer to the Tommy Bowden-era Clemson, then during the dynastic run from 2015-2020.
The issues are many on this team. There is no one to stretch the field on offense. The defense you could see on television, secondary players yelling to each other about what position to be in.
Some of the problems are fixable. It’s a little flukey to be inside an opponent’s 5 yardline three times and come away with 0 points. I really can’t see Clemson being that inefficient against anyone, but how do you fix no speed?
It is time to panic, and Clemson needs to play like that.
Any level of lackadaisical play and this team could be starting at 3 or 4 more losses.
